unicornstories

2012-02-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

"Everything had changed suddenly—the tone, the moral climate; you didn’t know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute—life or truth or beauty—of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good."
—Boris Pasternak

2012-02-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.
—Shauna Niequist

collaborative creativity with Jordan

2012-01-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

"When you’re a teenager and in your early twenties it seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we’re convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It’s a fallacy, of course, but it’s a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it’s called hope."
—Morrissey

2012-01-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

"The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther."
—Sylvia Plath

2012-01-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind."
—Neil Gaiman

2012-01-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

"What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true, we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table and order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Why? Where? When? Why?"
-Georges Perec

2012-01-05T21:15:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays i spent some time in Florida visiting the Grandparents in their little retirement community. I have to say though, being a Canadian, that i quite liked the donuts for breakfast and legalized fireworks in the city. McDonald's really let me down though. How American's live without their bran muffins and breakfast BLTs, i will never understand.

2011-12-20T14:52:00.000-08:00

“This is what you do. If you feel low, you stand tall. You mess up, you move on. You want to try something, try it, and if it was a stupid thing to try, you look it in the eye. There’s no turning back. You apologize if you’re sorry, but know that the nimblest, strongest hands can’t rebuild a bridge out of embers, so cut new wood. Start from scratch. You love with your whole heart. If you’re jealous, talk yourself from the ledge. If you can’t talk yourself down from the ledge, have a good time up there, looking down on the world. If you have to lie to make everything true again, lie like you mean it. If you find yourself in a cage, reach out through the bars for the key, unlock the door, and run away. If running away gets dangerous, run home. If home doesn’t mean what it used to mean, decide what home will be in the future. If your best friend says she doesn’t trust you, hold her jaw in your hand until it hurts, and make her face you. Thats all it takes. If you think you love a guy, see how his hand looks in yours, thats all it takes. If you get exiled into a new land, then go discover it. And if you feel like you’re drowning, go swimming.”
-Hobson Brown

2011-12-14T17:26:00.001-08:00

Today feels quite sad. Death isn't something you can ever escape it seems. The next person who asks me how excited i am for Christmas will have to be punched in the throat.

2011-12-14T15:59:00.001-08:00

So wasteful, so wasteful. Somehow this seemed like a good idea for my motion image project, throwing a burger in the air and trying to photograph it hitting the ground... then putting it back together, throwing it again... and again. I had hoped for it to turn out all awesome with exploding things like Andy Sandberg's Threw it on the Ground hahaa, ya no. Shame it was already almost dark or it may have sorta worked. Anyway, haha, it entertained me.

2011-12-04T18:39:00.001-08:00

"I think you could fall in love with anyone if you saw the parts of them that no one else gets to see. Like if you followed them around invisibly for a day and you saw them crying in their bed at night or singing to themselves as they make a sandwich or even just walking along the street and even if they were really weird and had no friends at school, I think after seeing them at their most vulnerable you wouldn’t be able to help falling in love with them."

2011-11-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.

—Rachel Caron

2011-11-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.
—Salvador Plascencia

2011-11-25T19:08:00.000-08:00

And the rest is rust and stardust.
—Vladimir Nabokov

2011-10-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."
—Oriah Mountain Dreamer

2011-09-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

We will drink beer and look at Facebook and write poetry about llamas and make drunken YouTube videos of us walking through a snowstorm at night in a gated community in Massachusetts. We will shower separately and meet in bed. You will turn off the light and I will sit on the bed and a car will pass on the street and its headlights through the window will briefly illuminate your left eyebrow and then your entire face as you walk toward me.

The next day you will work on a novel about a lonely woman in New York City. I will work on a novel about depressed movie stars who don’t read books or look at blogs or have pets. We will meet in the living room at 3:30PM and eat watermelon by the window and watch small children walk home from school. We will write poetry about planetariums and outdoor recess and drink iced coffee and lay on the carpeted floor listening to acoustic guitar music by sad women in their late-20s.

We will drive to a new Japanese restaurant across the street from a Wal-Mart shopping plaza and it will be very dark inside and we will sit side-by-side in a corner booth and hold hands under the table. We will eat edamame and drink green tea. We will stay more than two hours and our waitress will watch us from the distance and we will whisper illogical phrases to each other and nod with serious facial expressions and hold each other and look at the rest of the restaurant with wide and calm and discerning eyes while thinking about the future and death and the next day and boredom.

After dinner we will drive around listening to emotional guitar music from the mid-90s and you will rest your head on my shoulder and I will pet your hair and think about crying and you will look at the speedometer and think about your childhood. In a 24-hour grocery store at 2:30 a.m. we will walk through the produce section and it will be very bright and I will say that I feel insane and drunk and you will pick up a muffin and ask me how many calories I think it is and I will say 860 and you will say 1120 and I will slap it out of your hand and while you are distracted I will kiss your mouth and then step back and look at your face. You will ask what I see and I will say your name and grin and hold your hand and we will walk through each aisle of the grocery store without talking. In the parking lot you will let go of my hand and run to the car and stare at me as I walk toward you with a neutral facial expression.

In bed at 5:30 a.m. we will talk about organic gardening and small children and the future and Japan and Iceland and happy-sounding music with sad lyrics. When sunlight begins to brighten the room you will roll over and say you feel sleepy. I will pet your shoulder and hold you a little with my hand on your stomach. I will wonder if you are asleep and think about my friend in elementary school who I played Zelda with on regular Nintendo and what I would like the order of songs to be if I recorded a 5-song EP of sad songs with acoustic guitar and a muted drumset and a violin that sounded like it was being played in another room.

- Tao Lin

2011-05-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Follow your inner moonlight, don't hide the madness.
--Alen Ginsberg

2011-03-25T04:02:00.000-07:00

All great and precious things are lonely.
-- John Steinbeck

2011-01-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

After oxygen & carbon, humans are made up of stories.
-- Paige Williams.

2011-01-18T23:51:00.000-08:00

Living in Paris is grand.
♥

2010-06-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

Somehow she knew that you didn't get many moments like this in your life: Moments when you knew, without any doubt, that you were alive, when you felt the air in your lungs, and the wet grass beneath your feet, and the cotton on your skin; moments when you were completely in the present, when neither past nor future mattered.
--Neil Gaiman.

2010-06-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

I love that feeling. You know, the one you get when you take a deep breath and suddenly everything feels like its going to be okay. When you're hopeless as can be and life is going nowhere, there's those moments we have every now and then where we just stop, and we get this feeling that can't be described, but you just... you feel everything really is going to be okay. Like the world stopped spinning for a second, and everything was clear. I need more of those moments.
-- The X.

2010-06-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know -- because once i wanted something and got it. It was the only thing i ever wanted badly, and when i got it it turned to dust in my hands.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

2010-04-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Hello, i'm Rachel :). There isn't much to know about me, just that I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere...